


Child Rearing For Dummies

by Sagartolen



Series: Doctor Who: plot-bunnies [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childcare, Childhood, Children, Eleventh Doctor Era, Gen, TARDIS rooms, Time Travel, Travel, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 00:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5110310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sagartolen/pseuds/Sagartolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor kept his promise. Amelia Pond does not wait twelve years. Now the Doctor finds himself in the position of child caretaker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child Rearing For Dummies

He did not know what he had been thinking. Well…that was a lie. He knew exactly what he had been thinking. It had been something along the lines of, ‘ooh look a human I like those...I think…is that a temporal disturbance I feel?’ Then the crack and the food…lots of food. No the crack had come after the food. Yes that was right…he had been stabilizing so he had been searching for the correct combination of enzymes. His whole body had been in flux, new thoughts whizzing through his head, senses going haywire. There had been the strange/fascinating child- that had come before the food- and her equally interesting kitchen. 

Then he had zipped off to deal with the TARDIS’s hissy fit. She had completely remodeled, which was quite fantastic. Then there had been Prisoner Zero, the Etraxy, earth’s almost incineration and a final cryptic warning about silence falling. Honestly, it was all in a days work, really. 

And, at the end of it all, there had been young Amelia Pond- what a fantastic name that was too- standing there and staring expectantly up at him. 

He blamed his resent regeneration on his utter lack of foresight as he had whisked the small human away from her fascinating home, with its crack and its hidden room. ‘Why…humans are a lot smaller that I remember them being,’ he had thought in a muddle, totally disregarding the fact that he knew Amelia was a child. ‘But weren’t they all children…to him anyway…when were they supposed to mature again?’ had briefly crossed his mind but by then Amelia was already wondering around the TARDIS control room with wide eyes. 

In his defense the change had been a bumpy one. One of the rougher regenerations he had experienced. He supposed that could have been due to his reluctance to regenerate in the first place, fighting the process tooth and nail-as the saying went- until the last possible second. 

“Is this a space ship?” Amelia asked, approaching the control column. 

“Why yes, in fact it’s a ….No don’t touch that!” he lunched forward. 

“You’ll throw us off course, we’ll sip out of the time stream!” he waved his arms, spinning around, “and who knows where we’ll end up, the center of a sun, a black whole, anywhere.”

Amelia stared at him, “Your weird,” she said with such a certainty that it must be true. 

“Well yes, I have been called a bit weird before,”

“What does that button do?” She pointed at an atomic calculator. 

“That is used to calculate the atomic make up and density of the…”

“What does that do?” Amelia circled the controls. 

Amelia continued this for some time, which he rather liked. He enjoyed answering questions, something which must have carried though from his previous regeneration. 

Eventually, Amelia asked if she was allowed to go exploring, which he agreed to. He trust the TARDIS to keep an eye on her. He watched Amelia wonder off down a corridor, noting how unimpressed she was with the ‘bigger on the inside' deal. He supposed that was what children were like. 

He continued to explore the TARDIS controls re-familiarizing himself with their new configuration. While doing so he began to reorder what knew about children. 

He knew how to look after children… the information was all there. And he had looked after children in the past. But that was a long, long time ago. The question was…could he look after a child now? He was still getting a handle on this regeneration’s personality so he was not quite sure. He did feel like a rather scatter brained, forgetful sort of person…and young…he felt young. Almost childlike, and yet, he was so old. It was an odd combination and was sure to lead to some humorous situations in the future but not really ideal for childcare. 

A warning. like a tiny ‘ping,’ interrupted him accompanied by a series of mental projections as the TRADIS brought something to his attention. 

Cool breeze, the sound of darkness, the colour red, a hot solar flare and a winding corridor. He blinked that could not possibly mean what he thought it meant..

“The Anti-Chamber!” He exclaimed loudly, scooting over to spin the main control monitor towards him. 

“How on earth did she end up all the way down there,” he scanned the readings, confirming that Amelia Pond had indeed ended up in the Anti-Chamber, the room that led directly to the TARDIS’s secondary core, or engine-thing, there was not really a technical term to describe it. Either way it was not exactly the safest place to be. Push one wrong button and whoosh into the core you went. He really needed to get rib of that button. 

“Lost! What do you mean lost?” he said in indignation. She had barely been gone twenty minuets. How could she have gotten lost in that time? 

He poked at the TARDIS’s monitor, flipping a calibration wheel to his left. There was the faith murmur, brushing against his mind, which could have been humor, entertainment or disapproval, he really didn’t know, TARDIS’s not really having a set of straight forward emotions and all. 

“How can she be lost?” he muttered once more to himself. 

Foot prints`, high frequency whirring.

“Yes, Yes, I know,” he quickly ran out of the room hot on the trail of Amelia 

The secondary core- and all the cores really-was situated around the center of the TARDIS and could take anywhere between a few seconds to a few years to reach, depending on which rout you took and barring getting stuck in a faulty time field, which did crop up occasionally. 

Best to take the shorter rout. 

Amelia was sitting in the center of the room, looking slightly memorized by the assortment of coloured lights dancing across the ceiling. It was a simplistic Deta-Gamber entertainment system, which was slightly physic and designed to calm your standard low-rang brainwaves. He had always wondered where he put that. 

In front of Amelia stood a large eject button, sitting on its own little platform. He had thought in had been a good idea at the time. No way he could accidentally press something so obvious…right? 

“Amelia!” he flailed slightly, noting her dangerous proximity to the button. Her, being human- a young human!-, it would be only a matter of time before she pressed it. Humans and their curiosity. 

“Hello,” Amelia turned around and smiled, “this thing is cool,” she pointed up at the ceiling. 

“Yes, it is very cool,” he agreed, “quite a feet of technology.”

He moved forward crouching down and offering a hand, “How about we go sort out your room. If you like I can have it installed there.”

“OK,” Amelia hopped up, “can I have a slide in my room?”

He grinned, “I can’t see why not.”

He set a brisk pace back to the control room, pointing things out to a fascinated Amelia. 

Briefly, he worried over the fact that Amelia had barely been on the TRADIS an hour and already she had had a near death experience. 

“Well old girl,” he lent up against the TARDIS control column, “This will certainly be interesting,” he winced as Amelia accidentally knocked one of the temporal stabilizer out of place.


End file.
